AUDIO: Luis Buñuel’s The Young One: Anatomy of White Male Supremacy We open with the jazz tune, “Epistrophy,” from Eric Dolphy’s Last Date recorded in Holland in 1964. Epistrophe, from the Greek, means “a turning about” – and applied to The Young One, a constant shift of moral perspective with no settled view. As with our recent show […]

Last night we saw a movie with friends and then went out to share a meal and chat. Normal sounding stuff but really a bit sideways to normal. We went to Güeros, a Spanish language film. As I don’t know Spanish I was happy it was subtitled so my eyes could see what my ears […]

(Spoiler below) Will you listen? Let us first understand whiplash as a reactive consequence of force…but one that weakens with repetition. Further on Whiplash (The Dystopian Perfection of Whiplash), the movie starring J.K. Simmons (Daniel Fletcher) and Miles Teller (Andrew Neimann). I have decided it was intended to show us how the world has gone […]

We watched Whiplash last night. By all accounts it was an intense experience. Nerve-wracking to say the least. Perhaps triumphant in the end, but I don’t think so. Have you seen it? If not, in brief, a boy (19) who is a drummer and aspiring to be “one of the greats” is at the most […]

There is some contention that in particular cases of cancer, removing tumors, often the only treatment that can extend life by reducing the burden of carrying the disease (thus reducing its effects), actually speeds metastatic action. Especially if the surgery fails to be thorough. It is as if you open a seething sack of baby […]

One of the benefits of living in Bloomington is that the University has built a superb, state of the art, movie theater. Jon Vickers is the founding director of the IU Cinema and he deserves high praise for his work here. Saturday we went with friends to see The Salt of the Earth. The Salt […]

UPDATE, 1/5/2014: Patricia Arquette as quoted on IMDB concerning her character submitting to drunken abuse by men: “Now, I wouldn’t be like that. I would climb across the table and stab him in the head with a fork.” My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when […]

Perhaps you’ve seen the recent Lego movie. It’s gotten a good critical response based first on the ability of the “digital magicians” to make the action appear as if it were filmed via the manual (literally, by-hand) labor of stop-action animation. Next it is praised for its “parable” of standing against “business” practices and presenting […]

Briefly, regarding the George Clooney/Andrew Payne move The Descendants which takes place on an Hawaiian island. I found the movie somewhat “after school special” while watching it and immediately afterwards. But after some time and conversation I think the movie may have had far more to say than I allowed it. First, the “after school […]

Read the book. Our oldest child (12) said at the movie’s end, “That was not as good because they couldn’t show the things Katniss was thinking and most of the book is her thinking about things.” This is true. There is plenty of action in the book but much of the import of the action […]